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Wednesday, June 2, 2010

I have a collection of baseball patches in a big binder. Basically, it's like a step above stamp collectors on the cool ladder, but that's a really tall ladder. I'll share one with our OBP readers periodically.

Today we take a look at the 1969 Seattle Pilots, an American League expansion team that lasted only one year.

After the '69 season, the Pilots moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers. In 1977, the Mariners were born.

Ray Oyler: The worst player on the Pilots actually had a fan club, but there's still some speculation as to whether those folks had the right Ray Oyler. In his fifth season in the big leagues, the shortstop hit .165 with a .260 on-base percentage in 1969, making him as valuable as a replacement-level capuchin monkey. After going 2-for-24 in limited time for the California Angels in 1970, Oyler called it a career.

Opening Day sell out: Sick's Stadium was built for the Pacific Coast League, but when Seattle was awarded the Pilots, the new team had to play somewhere. On April 11 the Pilots played their first, and last home opener, beating the Whitesox, 7-0. A capacity crowd of 15,014 witnessed the historic victory. 15,014! That's seven Marlins' home games.